stup9id stupid stupid people ARGH!!!!!

[Scaledge]

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

Gosh, I cant believe there are like no people in gunthak besides 45+! Im lv 30, and i have to go to OT to drag a group over so i can hunt efficiently there at 30! GRRRR!!! It's awesome XP, hardly crowded, some of the drops are awesome, pe\lenty of undead for the pallies necros clerics and sks, merchants right nearby, great pathing, nice and linear, but the people are to blind to notice it! ARGH SOMEONE COME TELL THE OT JUNKIES THERES OTHER GOOD XP ZONES!!!!!!! :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

[Railina]

NOOOO!
Don't break the kunark cycle! Right now i have all the morons on just one continent and 2 camps in paludal. PLEASE don't tell them to spread out.

[cattywumpus]

Don't forget Rathe Mountains, plenty of morons there too! :roll:

[Breathe]

I get horrific lag in the new zones, that's the main reason why I've done nothing in them yet. :/ No use trying to hunt or explore if all I can look at is the ground or the sky. :/

[KyrosKrane]

Not sure that I agree with your assessment of the new zones...

Yesterday, a friend and I went into Gunthak and Dulak to hunt for our new spells. She's a 50 Druid; I'm a 49 Paladin. We figured the zones would be nice and easy for us to manage; we'd hunted all over the old (pre-LoY) zones as a pair, and were easily able to take on any zone with d-blue mobs.

We get to Gunthak, find the beach, and start wandering. We blunder a bit and find three skeletons on us. They're light blue; given our levels, we should be easily able to handle them and take them out, right? After all, if three light blue mobs attacked two level 50 characters in any old zone, I'd laugh my head off as I whacked them to shreds and my friend snared / nuked / rooted / dotted them.

Wrong. Within ten seconds, those three blue mobs had us both down to less than half life. I'm desperately fighting to take aggro off her so she can cast, and eventually I succeed. For the rest of the fight, my life did not go over 50%, and it was usually closer to 10%. I kill one of the mobs, and two are left. They're hitting me so fast I literally can't channel a root through so I can split them. The druid is too busy chain-healing me to cast anything else. If one heal had fizzled, I'd have had to Lay Hands to survive.

Eventually, we finish them off, heal up, and med up. We invis vs. undead to get past the beach, then use normal invis to get through the tunnel to Dulak. The one time invis breaks and one of the various Drogmors attacks (again, light blue), I again am reduced to near-half-life, even with the druid unmolested this time.

When we get to Dulak, we sniff around invis for a bit, seeking her target mob. Her invis breaks for a second, and four mobs instantly aggro. All are dark blue. Before she can react, they're all over her. Thankfully, SoW was still up, and we both make a mad dash for the zone. She makes it with maybe ten percent left.

We invis again, go in, and this time find her mob right near the entrance area, isolated with no others in aggro range. We quickly pull it. It's another dark blue mob; we figure between the two of us, we can handle it. Well, we can -- but that sucker was hitting for 100+ at a time, almost never missing, and so quickly that I was only able to channel a spell through once every four or five attempts. Again, she's forced to chain-heal me for us to live.

Keep in mind that just previously we'd been in Lower Guk, taking on the Dar and Bok ghoul knights (toughest mobs in the zone, save for the named like the Ghoul Lord). We could take on three of them without a worry, and two of them could be whacking on me at once and she still only had to cast the occasional heal. We are by no means an incompetent duo; we've been working together since our early 30's, and we've learned how to work well together and how the other will react to a given situation. (In fact, our characters are married in-game. )

In Dulak, one single mob was able to accomplish what three of the toughest dark-blue mobs in LGuk couldn't do: reduce us to near death.

The sad part is, the exp we got off the Dulak and Gunthak mobs was lower than that from the old zones. Quite frankly, it's just not worth it for us. The mobs hit twice as hard and twice as fast as they should, have double the HP they should, and only give a fraction of the exp they should. Sony needs to either reduce the toughness of the mobs, or double (or more!) the exp awarded to make it worth the risk. Dulak is NOT soloable at level 50, and the exp split for a group makes it unprofitable to hunt there. Unless a group is going in for a specific purpose (such as new spells or to discover the storyline), there are far better places to hunt for exp or loot.

[nightwulf]

NOOOO!
Don't break the kunark cycle! Right now i have all the morons on just one continent and 2 camps in paludal. PLEASE don't tell them to spread out.

I don't mind the OT kids so much. Don't get me started on the Goblin groups in HK tho ... :shock:

Nightwulf

[Unmei]

Sorry to hear that Kyros. I, unfortunately, was level 62 before LoY came out, though, to my surprise, I've found that there seem to be a number of mid to high 50's mobs in Nadox and Hate's Fury.

That being the case though, I suspect that the new spells were designed to be gotten by groups of characters of appropriate level to cast them. That means that your duo was probably more than a little bit light on what Sony anticipated/designed for.

You may find your XP rate improves dramatically if you can improve your kill rate too.

Meh. Ramblings.

[Glatius2]

Keep in mind that just previously we'd been in Lower Guk, taking on the Dar and Bok ghoul knights (toughest mobs in the zone, save for the named like the Ghoul Lord).

Lower Guk is 5 expansions old. The mobs there are greatly inferior to Velious mobs their level, let alone Luclin mobs. I imagine that LoY mobs are similar to watered down PoP mobs. Hit hard, have decent HP but not huge, and are much better slowed than not. If you went back with a slower, I imagine you'd do much better. I'm under the impression that recently SOE has just gone ahead and designed everything with slow in mind, so without it you're at a distinct disadvantage.

[Serenya]

I am almost hate to say this, since I rather like the fact that I have no competition for my preferred hunting spots…. However, I think you will find that Dulak is great if you have more then 2 people. I took two groups there Sunday, each time for no more then 4 hours. The first was: 52 cleric, 52 paladin, 51 wizard, 50 ranger, 50 beastlord. The second swapped a 50 warrior for the paladin. In each session the level 50s gained better then a bubble, while the level 52 got better then a half bubble AA. We came away in the morning with 1500pp to split, in the afternoon with 2000pp to split (a few more gem drops).

Mind you, while my group has found that we are hunting in perfect safety, never fighting more then one at a time, each time I have been there I have done multiple rezzes for others, (usually getting KEI in repayment, so mana was never an issue). In general I nuked once a fight and cast one or two celestial heals a fight; I was low mana only immediately after a rebuff, and we never stopped pulling because we wanted to keep the spawn broken. The only ones struggling to maintain mana were the beastlord and ranger.

Addendum. I also spent time in Nadox, and the mobs are much tougher there, a friend compared them to Seb mobs. In general, having been both with and without a slower, I would concur that having a slower is key -- in Dulak they hit for 150 or so, in Nadox for 300 or more.

[Jago668]

I don't understand the problem you were having. I took my 52 monk into a few zones. I could handle the gunthak zone (the one you first zone into) fairly easily. Meaning about 3 mobs at a time without to much problem. Of course casters always being somewhat problamatic especially with large numbers of shaman npc's about.

I could handle many of the mobs in dulak's harbor as long as they were single and I had some regen time after the fight. Now going into the mines and hate's fury, haven't been to the crypt yet. That was a completely different story. Even there though it wasn't horrible, took a 4 person group into hate's fury. Though they aren't your average players, was me at 52 monk, my old roommate 65 cleric, a 63 warrior, and a 65 enchanter. Pulls were easy. Mobs after enchanter slows didn't much dent the tank, except for some dog looking thing in the mines. That thing was just all kinds of evil, on defensive the warrior took 7 complete heals before we killed that thing.

[KyrosKrane]

You may find your XP rate improves dramatically if you can improve your kill rate too.

You're probably right; it would improve. However, that's not the point.

I can take a group into Lower Guk and kill some dark-blue mobs for, say, one hour. For that, I will get a particular percentage of exp as reward. I then take that same group into Dulak and kill for an hour.

My contention is that due to the increased difficulty of killing Dulak mobs, I will get more exp from Guk in one hour than I would from Dulak in one hour. In other words, even if I were to get a group with a slower, nuker, healer, and tank, plus two more, we would get FAR more exp for the time spent in Guk than we would in Dulak, because we would be more effective.

Lower Guk is 5 expansions old. The mobs there are greatly inferior to Velious mobs their level, let alone Luclin mobs.

Again, you're right, but that's neither here nor there.

The most recent estimates of exp formulae I've seen suggest that the exp you earn is primarily based on the level difference between you and the mob, plus some group and zone-based modifiers. In other words, assuming an identical group and identical zone modifiers, I will get the same raw exp for killing an old-world mob as I will for killing a Luclin or LoY mob of the same level.

As long as this is true (and granted, it's debatable), it would make more sense for me to exp on the mobs that are easier to kill. I have no justification for hunting in Dulak for exp.

Other common justifications include loot, quests, and just for fun. Loot is not spectacular. I've heard from others that it's decent, but I haven't spent enough time there to come to a conclusion one way or the other for myself. Quests are short-term. You go in, kill what you need, and get out -- which is what I'm doing now. Fun is open ended. If you wish to explore the zone, take in the beautiful scenery (and I HIGHLY recommend that you check out the zones if only for the sheer detailed imagery and new NPC models), then you can stay as long as you wish, and fight as much or as little as you wish.

My point is simply that for the effort required to hunt in Dulak, the exp reward is simply not worth the risk.

[Ilona]

Taking the same group I detailed above to LGuk netted a LOT slower experience than it did in Dulak or Gunthak.

I think the make-up of your group will make a lot of difference when deciding where to hunt for xp.

[Eumerin]

I posted a lengthy note over at Paladins of Norrath about problems I have with Gunthak. Here are a couple of the points.
1.) Green agro - everything agros, which gets really annoying, especially when you're a class without invis, and people with SoW insist on running from the beach to the zone outs, dragging mobs in their wake.
2.) Regen in this zone is literally horrific. I was fighting one of the drogmars, and in the time it took me to get off a greater heal (I was interrupted the first couple of times), the drogmar regenerated a higher percentage of its hit points than I healed of my own. Any class that doesn't have a high dps (*cough*paladins and warriors*cough*) is pretty much left out in the cold here. I can hit a lot more often than a mob hits me, but with the regen on these things, it merely means I die more slowly.

These two items are the single biggest reasons I dislike the zone. You're more or less forced to fight half the zone in order to get to a zone that you can exp in, but at the same time, the regen on these mobs is such that if you don't bring your own group, you're dead.
And meanwhile, all you want to do is reach a new zone so you can find a group to exp with.
What's really sick is that all of the mobs in the cave proper are basically yard trash.

[Lilosh]

I posted a lengthy note over at Paladins of Norrath about problems I have with Gunthak. Here are a couple of the points.
1.) Green agro - everything agros, which gets really annoying, especially when you're a class without invis, and people with SoW insist on running from the beach to the zone outs, dragging mobs in their wake.

Well, here's the thing.

People with SoW also have Invis/Camo. If they cast SoW themselves, that is.

Druids/Rangers = Camo
Bard With Selos(Close Enough) = Invis Song, I think.
Shamans = Camo , maybe? ( Never played a shaman)



-Lilosh

[Eumerin]

Every class except warriors, clerics, paladins, and monks, has some form of normal self-invis, afaik. So yes, those SoWing classes have it.
Unfortunately, I've seen far too many people who don't bother to use it. I've also seen more than one anguished shout along the lines of, "Please announce your train if you decide to go to Nadox!"
It doesn't take all that many inconsiderate people to ruin things for everyone else, and the linear design of Gunthak, along with the green agro mobs, tends to punish people who just happen to be in the way.

Best guess is that people run up the beach (where normal invis is not nearly as useful) and decide to keep on running through the caves. I've seen more than one person whip past with a skeleton or two hot on their heels, and I'm guessing they picked up those mobs on the beach, not in the caves.